Pm2
Poor Man Survival
Self Reliance
tools for independent minded people…
ISSN 2161-5543
A
Digest of Urban Survival Resources
Remember, that your real job in
life if you are free is that you need to free someone else!
>The Poor Man
How to Create (and Destroy) a Police
State
If you’re in one of the twenty-four states we’ll reveal in a
moment, hold onto your hat. Big Government’s cajones may’ve gotten a little
heavier this week in your neck of the woods.
Here’s why…
“On Monday,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “the
Supreme Court further weakened the Fourth Amendment by making it even easier
for law enforcement to evade its requirement that stops be based on reasonable
suspicion. The justices ruled 5 to 3 that a police officer’s illegal stop of a
man on the street did not prevent evidence obtained from a search connected to
that stop to be used against him.”
If you haven’t heard of this heinous ruling, here’s the quick
rundown…
It began with the case of Utah v. Strieff, where, the story
goes, Salt Lake City police officers received an anonymous drug tip about a
house with a lot of foot traffic.
Days later, citizen Edward Strieff left the suspected drug house
on his way to a convenience store down the street. Along the way, he was
stopped by narco-detective Douglass Fackrell and was asked for his
identification. The “routine check” found that Strieff had a warrant for, said
the report, a “small traffic ticket.”
Strieff was arrested for the warrant, and the cops, to
Fackrell’s disappointment we’re sure, didn’t find a flake of drugs on him.
Although Strieff did have a warrant, was the stop illegal? Yes.
Even the State of Utah said as much. It wasn’t based on any reasonable,
individual suspicion that Strieff had committed any crimes.
In short, the cop broke the law.
But, the state argued, as soon as the cop found the warrant,
everything changed. The stop all of a sudden became a retroactive loophole
around Fourth Amendment.
Funny how that works.
In other words, if a police officer commits a crime, but ends up
discovering a crime by a private citizen, his lawbreaking actions are
justified.
Because you are, of course, guilty until proven innocent. And
cops, well, they’re just above it all.
Justice Clarence Thomas shrugged the whole thing off. In his
words, Striefel was merely a victim of “good-faith mistakes,” and the illegal
stop was nothing more than “an isolated instance of negligence.”
Not impressed by the rhetoric, Justice Sonia Sotomayor shot
back: “Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language. This case allows
the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it
for outstanding traffic warrants -- even if you are doing nothing wrong.
“Two wrongs,” she said, “don’t make a right.”
The hallmark of a police state is when citizens are stopped
arbitrarily and told to show their “papers.” In a free society, citizens aren’t
required identify themselves to the police if they aren’t actively engaging in
a crime. It’s none of the police officer’s business.
But oh, how the seasons change.
This ruling is simply part of the larger trend. And another
small step for the totalitarian tip-toe.
It is, as Vince puts it on the Truth Axis blog, “a disappointing
continuation of the country’s never ending descent into a police state. Vast
sectors of the U.S. population, particularly those demographics and communities
that are targeted by the police, are now further exposed to legitimized
violations of their rights. It seems appropriate that this case involves a
narcotics investigation, as the victimless crime of drug possession has long
been used as a tool to target and criminalize enemies of the state.
“Perhaps,” he goes on, “it’s time to create a coalition against
consensual crimes to combat the rise of the police state.”
It’s an idea worthy of consideration.
Laws criminalizing victimless behavior, as Keith Preston points
out on the Attack the System blog, “are the primary reason why the U.S. police
state has grown dramatically in recent decades, and are the primary reason why
the U.S. prison population is so large.
“We need to begin organizing a political coalition of all those
impacted negatively by consensual crime laws for the purpose of repealing all
of these laws across the board and at every level of government.
“My recommendations,” Preston writes, "would be these:
-Repeal of all laws
criminalizing the possession and/or sale of drugs by and for adults, an end to
drug prosecutions and arrests, and the release of all drug war prisoners.
-Repeal of all laws
barring consensual adult prostitution, an end to all consensual prostitution
prosecutions and arrests, and the release of all prisoners incarcerated for
consensual prostitution offenses.
-The same set of
recommendations as above with regards to gambling.
-The same set of
recommendations as above with regards to the illicit production of alcohol
(“moonshining”).
-The repeal of all
laws pertaining to vagrancy, panhandling, or sleeping in public where this does
not involve obstructing traffic, undue harassment, or trespassing on other
people’s property.
-The repeal of laws
barring consensual assisted suicide.
-The repeal of all
laws banning smoking on private property if the owner wishes to allow smoking.
-The repeal of all
nanny state regulations pertaining to foods, beverages, seat belts, or
motorcycle helmets.
-The repeal of all
laws barring sexual relationships between consenting adults (to the degree that
any of of these remain).
-The repeal of all
laws barring voluntary, consensual practice of polygamy.
-The repeal of laws
criminalizing underage drinking or smoking.
-The repeal of
compulsory school attendance laws.
-The repeal of
mandatory Selective Service Registration for eighteen year olds.
-The repeal of laws
criminalizing or banning alternative food or medical practices such as the use
of raw milk or midwifery.
-An end to state
harassment of unconventional religious sects.
-An end to the
involuntary psychiatric incarceration of persons labeled “mentally ill” but who
have not been convicted of a crime.
-An end to mandatory
minimum sentencing.
-Dismantling of
police SWAT teams.
-Informing jurors of
their nullification rights.
There’s the rub: Without the freedom to lock up people for
victimless crimes, the Police State would quickly become impotent.
Victimless crimes make up more than 80% of the federal prison
population. Destroy the State’s power to arrest people for such activities, and
you dismantle the Police State.
But this depends upon, more than anything, the maturity of the
people.
“A free man,” Laurence Vance writes on the Lew Rockwell blog,
“must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he
considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as
something does not please him, of calling for the police.
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing
our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of
theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of
his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater
gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by
compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
“Victimless crime legislation requires a nanny state to enforce
it. A nanny state must of necessity be a police state and therefore hostile to
liberty. Real crimes that violate personal or property rights should be
enforced to the fullest extent of the law; victimless crimes should be opposed
root and branch.”
Yours for better living,
Bruce ‘the Poor Man’
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Additional
Resources
The Anatomy of a Breakdown
The Prepper’s Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide To Help You Through Any Disaster
Prepper’s Home Defense: Security Strategies to Protect Your Family by Any Means Necessary
Contact! A Tactical Manual for Post Collapse Survival
Have a Safe and Happy 4th of July!
2 comments:
I'm an old fart and I hardly recognize this country anymore-the government has virtually eliminated privacy and the Bill of Rights. I'm glad I don't have much time left and I sure don't envy the younger generation...but then again, most of them wouldn't recognize freedom the way we did. I feel it is a shame so many of us fought for these freedoms only to see politicians & bureaucrats eliminate them in the blink of any eye while most Americans seem to be asleep at the wheel.
Life in the American police state has become an endless series of don’ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun:
don’t talk back to police officers,
don’t even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year),
don’t run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal,
don’t carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun
John Whitehead, The Rutherford.org
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